Local

County animal control officers now have better protection against dangerous animals.

Lancaster County Council unanimously approved a resolution May 9 allowing animal control officers to be armed with long guns. The resolution adopts an animal control firearms usage policy detailing when, where and how a firearm can be used against a dangerous animal.

The policy says euthanizing an animal is authorized as a last resort or under several circumstances, including if an animal control officer or resident is being attacked.

An overflow of sewage into a creek in Fort Mill poses no danger to Lancaster County residents, health officials say.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control reported Monday that untreated wastewater was overflowing into Steele Creek. The leak was caused early that day by a damaged sewer line in Fort Mill's Melbourne subdivision.
By 3:20 p.m. Monday, crews had made a temporary repair to the line, said DHEC spokesman Adam Myrick.

An Indian Land Middle School 8th-grader has won first prize in a national cartoon contest geared toward teaching youth about the Bill of Rights.

Hayley Schmelzer, 13, was a first-prize winner in the second annual Nationwide Bill of Rights – First Amendment Cartoon Contest sponsored by the California Administrative Office of the Courts and The Constitutional Rights Foundation.

Hayley’s submission, one of 1,315 submitted this year, won first prize in the Middle School Comic Strip category.

The community had a chance this week to learn firsthand how the city of Lancaster is disinfecting its wastewater these days.

On Tuesday afternoon, the city hosted a presentation at its Lockwood Lane treatment plant that highlighted its new disinfection system, which is being paid for through a federal principal-forgiveness loan.

City residents and businesses use about 3 million gallons of water per day. That water has to be treated and disinfected before being pumped back into the Catawba River.

Local authorities are investigating whether two separate attacks on pedestrians within hours of each other on April 26 are related.

Deputies first responded at 1:26 a.m. to a Mosteller Drive resident in Lancaster who said he was assaulted as he walked. The 23-year-old man told a deputy he was walking at 1:10 a.m. in front of Mosteller Automotive & Wrecker Service, at 514 Mosteller Drive, when a white Honda Civic pulled up next to him.

That was how S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal summed up the county’s new courthouse building Thursday afternoon.

Toal joined several local and state leaders, as well as architects, engineers and contractors, for the building’s unofficial grand opening.

“It is functional and fitting and right and not over the top,” Toal said from the back steps of the new building, as she looked out onto a crowd of more than 100 people, many of whom had a hand in creating the building.